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Description

ESO 148-2 is a beautiful object that resembles an owl in flight. It consists of a pair of former disk galaxies undergoing a collision. The cores of the two individual galaxies - seen at the center of the image - are embedded in hot dust and contain a large number of stars. Two huge wings sweep out from the center and curve in opposite directions. These are tidal tails of stars and gas that have been pulled from the easily distorted disks of the galaxies. This cosmic owl is one of the most luminous infrared galaxies known and is located some 600 million light-years away from Earth.

This image is part of a large collection of 59 images of merging galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released on the occasion of its 18th anniversary on 24th April 2008.

About the object

Object name

ESO 148-2, ESO 148-IG002, AM 2312-591

Object description

Interacting Galaxies

Position (J2000)

23 15 46.85
-59 03 13.0

Constellation

Tucana

Distance

550 million light-years (200 million parsecs)

About the data

Data description

The Hubble image was created using HST data from proposal 10592: A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. Hubble material is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that NASA and ESA is credited as the source of the material. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute and for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre under Contract NAS5-26555. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or copyright statement at spacetelescope.org.

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